I kind of like them in a brutalist sort of way. They look loud even when you can't hear them.
Yes, I didn't really mean monstrosity in a bad way, more like big ass speakers.
I kind of like them in a brutalist sort of way. They look loud even when you can't hear them.
Well…Can that be backed up in any way?I really doubt that putting some felt on the front facia of a speaker in a rectangle (Dunlavy) or sawtooth (Wilson Audio) pattern will produce good spinorama results compared to a speaker with a waveguide. The built also looks very cheap to me, especially the Dunlavy speaker.
I'm not sure they're the same thingIsn't this basically one aspect of the "soundstage" discussion?
That is not actually coaxial, any more than a D'Appolito is coaxial.Ah, there you go. I forgot about that monstrosity for a moment.
How's that not a coaxial?That is not actually coaxial, any more than a D'Appolito is coaxial.
Because patents only last for so long? A lot of speaker companies copied John Dunlavy, AR is one that comes to mind immediately.But Wilson Audio does the same thing
So how's that possible? View attachment 392813
Remember, you're talking about designs that are 20 - 30 years old now. JD could have built fancy cabinets, but he chose what worked and was a reasonable cost. I have yet to see any passive speaker, at any price, match their impulse response, step response and frequency response measurements to this day; they're just about textbook perfect. To make an accurate passive speaker you have to have: 1) stepped baffles, 2) sealed enclosures, 3) 1st-order crossovers, very few speakers have all 3.I really doubt that putting some felt on the front facia of a speaker in a rectangle (Dunlavy) or sawtooth (Wilson Audio) pattern will produce good spinorama results compared to a speaker with a waveguide. The built also looks very cheap to me, especially the Dunlavy speaker.
Ino Audio's bigger models? Been around for a long time, but hardly known by people outside Sweden. Picture shows one of the larger "monitors" that are designed to go with subs. 4x9-inch woofers playing from 80 Hz and up.Remember, you're talking about designs that are 20 - 30 years old now. JD could have built fancy cabinets, but he chose what worked and was a reasonable cost. I have yet to see any passive speaker, at any price, match their impulse response, step response and frequency response measurements to this day; they're just about textbook perfect. To make an accurate passive speaker you have to have: 1) stepped baffles, 2) sealed enclosures, 3) 1st-order crossovers, very few speakers have all 3.
Correct. The patent in the link expired in 1996. Since then, the invention has been available for anyone to use. Essentially, a patent is an agreement between the patentee and the government - "if you give me the patent rights for a limited time, after that time expires I donate the patented technology for the public good",Because patents only last for so long?
Never seen or heard of those before. Seems odd to jump from a 1-inch tweeter to 9-inch woofers, there's going to be a big difference in beam-width at the crossover point; very narrow for the woofers, very wide for the tweeter. John Atkinson brought up this very topic in the John Dunlavy interview too.Ino Audio's bigger models? Been around for a long time, but hardly known by people outside Sweden. Picture shows one of the larger "monitors" that are designed to go with subs. 4x9-inch woofers playing from 80 Hz and up.
Atkinson: I do wonder that with designers who haven't thought through the fundamentals of what they're trying to achieve in loudspeaker design, a lot of the tweaking or "voicing" that they do with their speakers is balancing problems in the on-axis response, say, with those in the power response, or vice versa. Let's imagine that someone is using an 8" midrange unit that beams quite narrowly at the top of its passband, crossing over to a 1" tweeter that has very wide dispersion at the bottom of its passband. That speaker will tend to sound bright. So what the designer then does is to pull down the on-axis response in the presence region—he ends up fudging both the on-axis response and the power response to get something that will sound flat in a typical room. But you don't have a loudspeaker that is in any way accurate. And certainly you don't have any accuracy in the time domain. The step response will be all over the place.
Dunlavy: That's a very good observation, and certainly very, very true.
Atkinson: All the Dunlavy Audio Labs Signature loudspeakers feature a vertically symmetrical array of drive-units. Does that come about because of an analogy with antenna design?
Dunlavy: Yes, it does. In an antenna, generally you want the beam tailored so you get the energy directed in a certain direction to achieve maximum efficiency. Similarly, if you want a speaker to have a fairly flat room response, you can only achieve that by tailoring the design of the speaker such that the separation of the various drivers, as expressed in wavelengths across the audio spectrum, maintains a more or less constant vertical beam-width as well a fairly constant horizontal beam-width. That comes about by choosing drivers of different diameters. Say you have a 15" woofer, and you measured the beamwidth at 1kHz, then you compared that with, say, a 4" midrange at the same frequency. Good heavens—no comparison. A 4" midrange will have a very broad beam; the 15" woofer will have a very narrow beamwidth—you can find it by dividing 57 by the dimension expressed in wavelengths. That's the beamwidth.
You want symmetrical coupling into the room, which then implies symmetrical radiation patterns from the speaker in both horizontal and vertical planes. To achieve that, you have to have a symmetrical driver array. You place the tweeter at the average height of a seated listener's ears, which we take to be between 37" and 40", depending on the person in the chair. Then the rest of the drivers—a pair of midranges and a pair of woofers, or whatever—are symmetrically arranged above and below that tweeter.
The first speakers were designed around 1979 or perhaps beginning of 1980s. They measure and sound good IMO especially the larger models I’ve listened to. Below a link to the smallest base model. Perhaps not text-book linear response but within +/- 2 dB or so. Tweeters have both waveguides and felt.Never seen or heard of those before. Seems odd to jump from a 1-inch tweeter to 9-inch woofers, there's going to be a big difference in beam-width at the crossover point; very narrow for the woofers, very wide for the tweeter. John Atkinson brought up this very topic in the John Dunlavy interview too.
2 pages later:
That pulse response in the link, is stunning.The first speakers were designed around 1979 or perhaps beginning of 1980s. They measure and sound good IMO especially the larger models I’ve listened to. Below a link to the smallest base model. Perhaps not text-book linear response but within +/- 2 dB or so. Tweeters have both waveguides and felt.
Any PA system at a concert? They may not sound great, but my brain is pretty convinced the sound is coming from the folks on stage.So basically
Are there any specific speakers that that can be defined as the best at disappearing?
So basically
Are there any specific speakers that that can be defined as the best at disappearing?
That pulse response in the link, is stunning.
Tack!/Tak!
I know that it is “frequency response uber alles” here.
At some point the time domain behaviour matters. These seem to have it.